


I'll Be Your Guide

by pastel_x_tea



Category: Beetlejuice - All Media Types, Beetlejuice - Perfect/Brown & King
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bittersweet Ending, Death from Old Age, Hospitals, Illnesses, Needles (briefly mentioned), Old Age, Terminal Illnesses, beetlebabes shippers fuck directly off, yeah it's more bittersweet than happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-27 23:32:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19800040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pastel_x_tea/pseuds/pastel_x_tea
Summary: Lydia Deetz receives a familiar guest after many years.





	I'll Be Your Guide

“Ms. Deetz? You have a visitor.”

Lydia looked over at the nurse and smiled faintly. “Send them in.”

The nurse looked behind her with slight concern at the guest she’d brought, then hurried away to busy herself with anything else. A sleek young man in a striped suit stepped in, holding a bouquet of white lilies.

He was truly a sight to behold, from top to bottom. Sleek black hair slicked back like a greaser, pale skin, as though he’d never set foot in the sun and blindingly white teeth to match, with an immaculately tailored black-and-white striped suit, magenta undershirt, and black tie, and sharply pointed dress shoes. He was even more of a spectacle as his black hair started to fade into splotches of greens and grays. His suit grew looser on him, sprouting loose strings along with mold and mildew. His pale skin tinted green, his teeth tinted yellow. And he finally smiled. What a sight for sore eyes.

“Lydia.”

“Beetlejuice.”

He pulled a chair to her bedside, taking his seat and leaning his head on his shoulder, his eyes soft in their gaze. “Y’ look like ya haven’t aged a day.”

Lydia laughed, holding her cannula to keep it from slipping from the force. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed like this, and this instance wasn’t even particularly funny; she was just so filled with joy that it needed to release itself. “And so do you, ghost with the most. It’s been so long. How was your trip?”

“Ugh, terrible.” Beej rolled his eyes. “Hadta find some sap to play charades with, he couldn’t get it, he called in his buddy, _that_ guy couldn’t get it, took a picture, phoned a friend…” Beej huffed. “Finally one of those dungheads managed to string some-a those B-words together for me. But enough about me, let’s talk about _you_. How’ve the last 80 years been treatin’ ya, babes?”

“Oh, the usual human affairs. Fucked around and got a job for 60 years or so. That was alright, I guess.”

“Job. Yyyyyyyy _uck_. I forgot you breathers had to do that. Is that really _it_?”

“Of course not, Beetlejuice. I went to college and studied what I loved.” She watched the ghost’s face scrunch up again at the mention of the word ‘study’. “I went on vacations, I taught, I ate all sorts of cool stuff. I ate _pufferfish_. And I-“ Her sentence was punctuated by a series of coughs. “I made _friends,_ Beetlejuice. Real, living friends who loved who I was. People like me. Oh, it…” The end of her sentence faded off, lost in her thoughts.

“That sounds great, Lyds. I…” He awkwardly scratched the back of his neck, staring at his feet. “I wish I coulda been there to see it.”

“Oh, Beetlejuice…”

“No, no, it’s not your fault. Whole ‘curse’ thing, y’know, I can only pop in when I’m summoned and one day the summonings just… stop. Always do. I just wish I coulda been _watchin_ ’, is all. Didja get one of those fancy… whatzit called, Masturba-“

“ _Master’s_ degree. And I did. You’re really not gonna ask me about the pufferfish?”

“Hey, I’m dead. It’s less impressive in the Netherworld.” Beetlejuice shrugged, eliciting another laugh, a bit more pained than the last. “Oh, and a _gnarly_ haunted house.”

“The gnarliest. No ghosts with the mosts, but we did have a bunch of spiders in the attic doing their thing.”

“Yummy.” Reminded of this, he pulled a beetle from his suit pocket and chomped down on it.

Lydia sighed and rolled her eyes. “You haven’t changed at all, have you?”

“Nope. Not even my clothes. Been goin about a century strong in this suit alone.” Beej cackled as Lydia wrinkled her nose at him, holding her cannula behind her ears. Even watching her as happy as she was, he was still squirming in his seat at the sight of her. The cannula in her nose, running up her cheekbones, behind her ears, and into a tank, the slow, slow drip of some kind of pain medicine through the butterfly needle in her vein, even the clean white sterility of her room, it was all so… _wrong_. Beej would love to say things hadn’t changed at all, but they clearly had. No adventurous spirit, no late nights spent dancing on the tables and pulling pranks. Not in this future. Just bedpans and shrink-wrapped hospital food. Lydia’s voice lured him back to attention.

“I know why you’re here, Beej.”

He shook his head, snapping out of his daze. “Huh?”

“We’re stalling, aren’t we? We both know why you came.”

“Can’t a ghost just pretend to be a human to come and visit his best friend without havin’ his motives questioned left ’n right?”

“Beetlejuice, you brought _lilies_.”

He threw his hands up in the air. “Flowers are pretty! Maybe I just wanted ya to have somethin’ pretty in a place like this, huh? Maybe I just…” Oh man, he was seeing spirals. His train of thought was totally off the rails. He put a hand to his head, fingers knotted in his hair. “Maybe I just… maybe I just… maybe I just…”

Lydia slowly propped herself up on her elbow, gingerly taking his hand away from his hair and holding it in her own. “I’m ready.”

“Y- what?”

“Beetlejuice, I’m _ready_. And I know that’s why you came. You can’t tell me you probably don’t have some big red neon sign up in your house, the 'Lydia Birthday Calendar' or something, tracking how long I’ve been alive-“

“It’s called the ‘Lydia _Countdown_ Calendar, thank you very much. I appreciate alliteration. And it’s _green_.”

“Stalling.”

“ _I’m not stalling!_ ”

“You _are_.” She laid back down with a sigh of relief, and Beetlejuice allowed her to pull his hand with her as she now took it in both of hers. “You’ve been stalling for a while, watching that clock- literal or metaphorical, _or_ green- and it’s getting too high for even _you_ to keep slacking on it, so you get someone to summon you and you head right here, cause you don’t know how many more of those tick-tocks I’ve got left.”

“I- uh-“ Beej sputtered, biting at the inside of his mouth. “Lyds, I-“

“And I’m _ready_.”

Beej furrowed his brow. “Lyds, I’m gonna stay here as long as you need me to. No matter what.” He opened his jacket, exposing its wiggling inner pockets. “Just look how many beetles I got in here! I’m ready kid- uh, not kid. I’m _staying_.”

“And I don’t _want_ to stay. Beej, look at me. Just for a second.” He glanced back over at her, and all her tubes and her tanks. Her stained patient’s gown, her needle-pricked arms and her unwashed hair. “You think _this_ is life? I know it is for some people, I _know_ some people want to stay. Then… then let them stay. But I want to _go_. And now that you’re here it’s… y’know, it’s perfect.”

“I’m _fully_ prepared to stay here as long as you’re alive-“

“Which hopefully won’t be much longer. Beej, I _hurt_. God, I hurt. I have to take these giant pills, and the bed has to sit me up because I can’t do it myself anymore. I’m always getting stabbed by needles and watched by nurses and I’m shitting in a goddamn _pan_. Please, Beetlejuice.” She grasped his hand tighter. “Nothing would make me happier than to be able to leave with my best friend.”

“Babes…”

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath of the dry air. It was supposed to calm him down, but it didn’t work. He did it a few more times, but this… this _feeling_ lingered there, unable to be expelled with the sharp huffs of air. This sadness, and anger, and… _fear_. He couldn’t even _remember_ the last time he felt fear. Bitterness and pain and…

Resignation.

“I swear, you’re gonna have the best guide to the Netherworld you’ve ever seen. I’m gonna be stuck to you like glue, you’re not gonna get lost or anything, nobody’ll mess with you, I’ll clobber ‘em, I’ll pound ‘em, give ‘em the ol’ one-two, I-“

“I know.” She sighed softly. “I know.”

Lydia stood from the bed, using her best friend’s hand as a crutch. Her gown unfurled into a long black dress, the material soft and familiar. The prolonged beeping in the background fell upon deaf ears between the two of them. She looked down at her smooth hand, putting a hand to her softer face and feeling her short, curled black hair resting below her cheekbones. Her legs miraculously worked beneath her as she took a few steps to look at herself in the shiny reflection coming off a painting on the far wall, pulling Beej along. This was _her_ again.

Beetlejuice smiled at her, squeezing her hand back for the first time since she’d taken it. “I know some folks who’ll really want to meet you, babes. Whaddya say?”

Lydia smiled. “It’s showtime.”

A team of nurses rushed in just moments later at the sound of the beeping, looking for their patient and her strange and unusual guest. But both were already dearly departed.


End file.
